Gemini wasted my time today assuring me that if I want a git bundle that only has the top N commits, yet is cleanly clone-able, I can just make a --depth N clone of the original repo, and and do a git bundle create ... --all.

Nope; cloning a bundle created from a depth-limited clone results in error messages about missing commit objects.

So I tell the parrot that, and it comes back with: of course, it is well-known that it doesn't work, blah blah. (Then why wasn't it well known one prompt ago, when it was suggested as the definitive answer?)

Obviously, I wasn't in the "the right mindset" today.

This mindset is one of two things:

- the mindset of a complete n00b asking a n00b question that it will nail every time, predicting it out of its training data richly replete with n00b material.

- the mindset of a patient data miner, willing to expend all they keystrokes. needed to build up enough context to in effect create a query which zeroes in on the right nugget of information that made an appearance in the training data.

It was interesting to go down this #2 rabbit hole when this stuff was new, which it isn't any more. Basically do most of the work, while it looks as if it solved the problem.

I had the right mindset for AI, but most of it has worn off. If I don't get something useful in one query with at most one follow up, I quit.

The only shills who continue to hype AI are either completely dishonest assholes, or genuine bros bearing weapons-grade confirmation bias.

Let's try something else:

Q: "What modes of C major are their own reflection?"

A: "The Lydian and Phrygian modes are reflections of each other, as are the Ionian and Aeolian modes, and the Dorian and Mixolydian modes. The Locrian mode is its own reflection."

Very nice sounding and grammatical, but gapingly wrong in every point. The only mode that is its own reflection is Dorian. Furthermore, Lydian and Phrygian are not mutual reflections. Phrygian reflected around is root is Ionian. The reflection of Lydian is Locrian; and of Aeolian, Mixolydian.

I once loaded a NotebookLM with materials about George Russel's concept of the Lydian Chromatic, and Tonal Gravity. It made an incomprehensible mess of explaining the stuff, worse than the original sources.

AI performs well on whatever is the focus of its purveyors. When they want to shake down entry-level coding, they beef it up on entry-level coding and let it loose, leaving it unable to tell Mixolydian from mixing console.

Thank you! This is what I've been trying to tell people about LLMs. They don't hold up. They're like those Western movie set towns that look normal from the front, but when you walk around behind them, you see it is all just scaffolding with false fronts.

what model did you ask? here's the exact reply I received from Claude Sonnet, which appears to be exactly the answer you were expecting:

"Among the seven modes of C major, only Dorian is its own reflection.

Understanding Mode Reflections When we reflect a mode, we reverse its interval pattern. The modes of C major and their interval patterns are:

Ionian: W-W-H-W-W-W-H

Dorian: W-H-W-W-W-H-W

Phrygian: H-W-W-W-H-W-W

Lydian: W-W-W-H-W-W-H

Mixolydian: W-W-H-W-W-H-W

Aeolian: W-H-W-W-H-W-W

Locrian: H-W-W-H-W-W-W

The Palindromic Nature of Dorian Dorian mode is palindromic, meaning it produces the same scale whether you read its interval pattern forwards or backwards. When you reverse the Dorian interval pattern W-H-W-W-W-H-W, you get exactly the same sequence: W-H-W-W-W-H-W.

Mirror Pairs Among the Other Modes The remaining modes form mirror pairs with each other:

Ionian-Phrygian: Mirror pair

Lydian-Locrian: Mirror pair

Mixolydian-Aeolian: Mirror pair

For example, when you reflect the C major scale (Ionian), which has the interval pattern W-W-H-W-W-W-H, you get H-W-W-W-H-W-W, which corresponds to the Phrygian mode.

This symmetrical relationship exists because the whole diatonic scale system can be symmetrically inverted, creating these natural mirror relationships between the modes"